


Something Like Gravity

by MisPronounce_and_MisAccent



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Aknowledging and Resolving Jesper's feelings for kaz, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Guilt, Healing, Insecurity, Introspection, Jesper Fahey Character Study, M/M, Mornings, Post-Canon, Slow Dancing, Wylan Singing, lots of introspection, the desire to be gentle after such a dangerous life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:14:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24301942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisPronounce_and_MisAccent/pseuds/MisPronounce_and_MisAccent
Summary: It is a fragile thing, what they have. Not that Jesper is naive enough to mistake anything about Wylan for fragility— it isn’t about him, it’s about what lies between them, this tentative collection of feelings and hope. It is on its fourth heartbeat and its third breath, before a name has been whispered into the room. It is small and delicate and precious and Jesper wants— in a way he hasn’t wanted anything since Kaz, and even this is different— he wants to see it grow.
Relationships: Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck
Comments: 1
Kudos: 65





	Something Like Gravity

Mornings have never been kind to Jesper.

He awakes with too-bright light accosting him through too-wide windows, a too-large bed giving him too much space to turn. Squinting, he reaches his hand out, searches for a body he doesn’t find, searches harder for a lingering warmth on the other side of the mattress— there. Warm. His eyes adjust to the light, eventually, and he finds, laid the pillow, a scrap of paper. On it is scrawled a hasty but accurate layout of the house, with a circle of arrows pointing in towards one room on the east wing. In the corner is a tiny heart, ink smudged as if it was almost wiped away.

Jesper smiles.

He refolds the little map and gets dressed. After settling into a nice vest, he tucks the note against his chest, in case he’ll need it to guide him. He still doesn’t quite know this house.

He sets out from the bedroom, flinching away from the bright of the windows that line the side of the house. He knows why Wylan chose the bedroom he did; so much of the manor is dark in its expansiveness, cold and dismal and cell-like. A prison. Jesper understands why he appreciates the wide windows, the view of the grounds, the endless greens and pinks. It was something Jesper loved too, back when his home was a farmhouse and flowerfields and early mornings heralded by the sun.

That hasn’t been his home in very long.

He just misses it, sometimes, the other life. The tight, dark corners of the Barrel. The knowledge that nobody could see you better than you could see them. The trust inherent in such darkness. He misses the people, too. Inej is the first to come to mind, but Nina too, Matthias. And then, of course—

Well, it’s always been hard to say that he misses Kaz.

He loved Kaz, obviously. Loved him deep and aching, cruel and teeth-bared and not caring about the chances. Kaz was his leader, his savior, and, he likes to think, his friend, and that doesn’t vanish. Jesper hasn’t seen him in a month, two, maybe, but Wylan will say the name or it will pass into his mind, unbidden, and he will be thrown back to who he was when he looked up at the coldest face he’d ever seen and scavenged for warmth behind it.

He never managed to find that warmth, not really. He hopes Inej has better luck.

Because for all he’d loved Kaz— or loves, maybe, though the thought wracks him with guilt— it was a love in its impossibility. It was a love in knowing _he’ll never give me a second look_ , a love watching the way he would soften, just slightly, for Inej. Never for him. It required nothing more than an ache in the chest and granted nothing more than a new shallow defense of his recklessness. It was, for all it hurt, easy.

It isn’t like that with Wylan.

He walks the halls of the mansion, with not an ounce of rush, feels both out of place and sickeningly right being hit by the same light that hits the portraits of men who’ve done nothing but steal and hurt and take. He tries to make sense of himself in these halls, map his idea of the word ‘home’ onto its looming door frames and unending corridors, but home for him was never the place— neither the farm nor the Barrel. ‘Home’ has always meant people. His da or the Dregs (it really is Inej he misses most; she is off rediscovering her own family, but he still wants to call her his) or their team of crows. It could be Wylan, he thinks. Wylan could be his home.

It’s too early to make such bold statements.

The problem, as Jesper diagnoses it with a sudden unease in his stomach, his body halted mid-step, is that he wasn’t made for such things. The word ‘relationship’ sits stiff and unwieldy on a tongue so used to quick wit and meaningless flirting, parts of him so ingrained that he doesn’t know who or what he would be without them. He is not a man of permanence. He is a bullet in the chamber of a gun, and there is always a finger on the trigger ready to send him far away, who-knows-where doing who-knows-how-much damage, without a care for any of it.

He doesn’t want to hurt Wylan.

It’s as simple as that, really. His skillset is flirting, one-night-stands, and hopeless, impossible love that could never lead to anything. He doesn’t know how to do this, early mornings in warm beds and meeting parents and holding hands over the table and reading to him at night and languid evenings that never need to rush because he isn’t going anywhere, neither of them are. He isn’t used to it, but he’s been _trying_. He’s been trying and he’s loved every moment of it, but he doesn’t trust himself not to falter. Not to mess up. Doesn’t trust himself to be a man Wylan could love, love for more than the fact that he was around, available, at the same moment Wylan was.

He’s too in his own head. He finds himself once again missing the chaos of the Dregs, the early morning racket, something more distracting than birds outside the window and wind through the shades and faintly, faintly—

Singing.

Jesper doesn’t know if he loves Wylan. He doesn’t think himself wary of love, but it feels foolish to try to force something so delicate and still growing into such a hard-ridged, defined box. But if there is an ounce of certainty, Jesper loves when Wylan sings. It is always soft, always cautious, a lingering fear of being too loud in a home where he’d had to know his place, but it speaks to a freedom within him that could never have been stifled. It occupies the same space in Jesper’s heart that does Wylan’s art and his concentration when building something bold and dangerous. It is the Wylan that caught Jesper’s eye and kept him entranced, the Wylan that worked so hard to be more than the cards he was dealt, better than his father in mind and heart, creative and clever and above all, good. Jesper leans back against the wall and listens, listens and smiles and even hopes.

It is a fragile thing, what they have. Not that Jesper is naive enough to mistake anything about Wylan for fragility— it isn’t about him, it’s about what lies between them, this tentative collection of feelings and hope. It is on its fourth heartbeat and its third breath, before a name has been whispered into the room. It is small and delicate and precious and Jesper wants— in a way he hasn’t wanted anything since Kaz, and even this is different— he wants to see it grow. He wants to watch it evolve into something with a name and a future, whatever those things may be. He wants but he is so scared, so scared he’ll be the one to walk out, or he’ll be the one to make the mistake and have Wylan leaving him—

But that is why it is fragile. It is delicate. And Jesper, he reminds himself, is so, _so_ ready to be gentle. He is a man who has hurt and taken and loved to no end but despair, and now he _wants_ to be softer. He wants something he can take care of, and he wants to do it by Wylan’s side.

He takes the steps, one then two then three, four five six— counting to ensure he does not rush— towards that voice, towards the sound of song around the corner. Walks and counts and then— sees him. Wylan, mouth wide with song and feet bare on the marble floor and shirt loose and flowing as he walks around the living room, moving and changing it in the way he has done to so many of the rooms in the house, making it his. And, on so many occasions, inviting Jesper to join, making it _theirs_.

Wylan sees him, then. He smiles, and, without a word, reaches a hand out to him. Jesper walks to him and takes it, feels a sense of rightness as their fingers intertwine. When Wylan pulls Jesper to him, he allows it. When Wylan puts a hand on his waist and leads him in the opening steps of a dance, he follows. And he listens, when Wylan begins to sing.

It is something like gravity, Jesper thinks, that keeps him from falling out of the sway of the dance, out of the orbit they create around the room. He doesn’t have practice in dance like this, slow and rhythmic and repetitive. But Wylan is gentle with him. Slowing the melody when Jesper needs to catch up on a step, speeding up when Jesper turns too fast, interspersing the lyrics with a laugh when Jesper steps on his toes. Never angry at the misstep, never annoyed at Jesper for interrupting this delicate, beautiful thing. Just taking it in stride and moving, unfalteringly, on.

Wylan, after what seems like hours in their own gentle orbit, begins to slow, turning in smaller circles and repeating the same final lines, until he stops. Stops and smiles up at him once more.

“Good morning, Jesper.”

The sun pours in through the windows, warming Jesper’s back and spilling over Wylan’s face, turning him golden in the daylight.

_What a morning it is._

**Author's Note:**

> Hello loves!!
> 
> I wrote everything from "He loved Kaz, of course" on in a fugue state one morning back in January, and was so sick of this just sitting in my "assorted fic" folder then I finally decided to stitch together a beginning and post it.
> 
> I haven't read SoC in nearly two years, now, but since I read it I've had this lingering feeling of... disappointment, regarding the jesper/wylan relationship. I love the book, don't get me wrong, and i think jesper and wylan had a lot of potential, but i felt they were a bit rushed, and stifled by the weird half-inclusion of jesper's feelings for kaz that were never resolved. i love jesper and wanted to try to read into his character a bit regarding his feelings of insecurity and desire for stability, and try to work out what had felt lacking to me in their book relationship.
> 
> I could go on, but i really just want to thank y'all for reading. I would be delighted to hear what you thought of this little piece!! Kudos are also always, always appreciated. Goodnight loves!!


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